A study of Sunrise Girl-Child’s DNA (Xach'itee'aanenh T'eede Gaay, in the local Indigenous language) indicates there was a single wave of migration into the Americas across a land bridge, now submerged, that spanned the Bering Strait and connected Siberia to Alaska during the Ice Age, scientists said on Wednesday.
The infant belonged to a previously unknown Native American population that descended from those intrepid migrants, the researchers added.
"The study provides the first direct genomic evidence that all Native American ancestry can be traced back to the same source population during the last Ice Age," University of Alaska Fairbanks archaeologist Ben Potter said.
The remains of the infant were unearthed in 2013 at a prehistoric encampment in Alaska's Tanana River Valley, about 80km southeast of Fairbanks.
It’s believed the girl belonged to a hunter-gatherer culture that hunted bison, elk, hare, squirrels and birds and caught salmon. She was found alongside remains of an even-younger female infant, possibly a first cousin, whose genome the researchers could not sequence. Both were covered in red ochre and surrounded by decorated antler tools.
The researchers studied the baby's genome alongside genetic data of other populations to unravel how and when the Americas were first populated.
Their research suggests a single ancestral Native American group split from East Asians about 36,000 years ago, and thousands of years later crossed the land bridge. This founding group diverged into two lineages about 20,000 years ago, scientists said.
The first lineage trekked south of the huge ice caps that covered much of North America between 20,000 and 15,000 years ago, spreading throughout North and South America and becoming the ancestors of today's Native Americans.
The second was the newly identified population called Ancient Beringians who included the infant. They eventually disappeared, perhaps absorbed into another population that later inhabited Alaska.
Some scientists have also hypothesised there have been multiple migratory waves over the land bridge as recent as 14,000 years ago.
The research was published in the journal Nature.
